Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden (English Translation) Neo-Geo CD

============================================================================== SHINSETSU SAMURAI SPIRITS BUSHIDO RETSUDEN TRANSLATION v1.10 https://ko-fi.com/moriyamug ============================================================================== Here's what you've been waiting for... version 1.1 of the long-awaited English translation of Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden, better known outside of Japan as "Samurai Shodown RPG," with its new localized title of "Samurai Shodown: Tales of the Bushido." My white whale has finally been slain. This is a free translation. If you paid for it, you got ripped off. Don't reward bootleggers by buying repros, especially not of a CD-based game. And PLEASE don't make, sell, or distribute pre-patched versions of the game. Features: - 100% complete translation to English. - Bug fixes from the original Japanese, like some character portraits not being displayed - A healthy amount of original art, including a new font & title screen by combustocrat - Selectable alternate palettes. Hold D while pressing A when confirming any character selection until you hear a chime. ============================================================================== QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS ============================================================================== These improvements are initially based on the region of your system, but can be individually toggled on and off via soft DIPs. As of this writing, these are only directly accessible in the Raine emulator or Furrtek's SDLoader for authentic hardware. Not that this is NOT the same thing as the debug DIPs. But you still have options, either way. They can be enabled or disabled by setting the system region in the BIOS settings of your emulator (or UniBIOS). If your system region is US or EU, these will be enabled by default. If your system region is JP, these will be disabled by default. HP/SP Tab Values - +10, +100, +200 STR/SPD Tab Values - +1, +5, +8 Battle Rate - Normal, Longer ATK Scaling - 0.1x to 2.0x, 0.7x to 1.3x, None Element System - Neo Geo, PS1/Saturn, Remix These are covered in detail at the end of the PDF manual (included). ============================================================================== REVISION HISTORY ============================================================================== 1.00 2023/11/29 Initial release 1.10 2024/02/04 Bugfix release - Added new soft DIPs to enable adjustment of damage scaling and encounter rate - Game should now work when played on a NeoSD flash cart NOTE: This game has audio issues when played from NeoSD, which cannot be fixed unless TerraOnion issues a firmware update. No further work is planned on this. - Fix for "Ice Dust" item name being cut off in combat menu - Fix for Cham Cham's "Wing Cloud" in combat menu - Fix for Haohmaru's "Imperial Negation Slash" in combat menu - Fix for Haohmaru's "Imperial Skyrender Slash" in combat menu - Fix for Genjuro's "Death of 100 Demons" in combat menu - Fix for Kyoshiro's "Kirin Dance" and "Ogre Dance" in combat menu - Text formatting: Nakoruru and Charlotte in bar after already selecting companions - Multiple fixes for enemy names/techniques - Text formatting: Nakoruru after boss in Osaka - Text formatting: Haohmaru vs. Genjuro in Descent of Dark Skies - Text formatting: Nakoruru line in Osaka tomb - Text formatting: Ukyo scene in Mt. Aso - Text formatting: Galford scene in Izumo with Jubei - Text formatting: Galford scene w/child in Peking - Text formatting: Galford scene in Paris church - Text formatting: Holy man scene in San Francisco - Text formatting: Several timing fixes to Mizuki ending - Fixes/improvements to alt palettes - Adjusted look of + and - in menus to be more legible - Added special font tiles to get rid of weird abbreviations for "Leggings" items - Added special font tiles to change "Wht Crusader" enemy to "WhiteCrusader" - Corrected Pres. Franke's attack names to proper German (with thanks to @_Ewlbo on Twitter) - Corrected Panacea item description - Miscellaneous context fixes Please report bugs to deucemugen @ hotmail . com with subject "SSRPG" Unless something major is reported, this will likely be the final release. ============================================================================== HOW TO APPLY THE PATCH ============================================================================== This patch is distributed in XDELTA format (http://xdelta.org/). You can use the command line executable or another XDELTA-compatible patcher (NOT INCLUDED). This patch requires the REDUMP rip of the game, available on archive.org. Look for "redump.ngcd.revival" and the archive named "Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits - Bushidou Retsuden (Japan).zip" 1. Extract the game into the same folder as the patch and xdelta.exe 2. Compare your track 1 with the CRC32 checksum below 3. Run the batch file. This will apply the patch and rename the files. 4. Burn to disc or load to ODE/NeoSD/MiSTer/emulator. 5. Enjoy! ============================================================================== COMPATIBLE DUMPS ============================================================================== REDUMP rip - 1 CUE and 32 BIN files Archive: Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits - Bushidou Retsuden (Japan).zip File to patch: Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits - Bushidou Retsuden (Japan) (Track 01).bin File/ROM SHA-1: 69DA036E094A971A035C63C7B365179E031AEA2C File/ROM CRC32: 6D0FAABA ============================================================================== BEFORE YOU PLAY ============================================================================== Because of the way the font routine works, text will appear two characters at a time. This is normal, but the side effect is that names with an odd number of characters will have an additional trailing space, so instead of seeing "Genjuro attacks!" you'd see "Genjuro attacks!" Adjusting the system to use strictly 8x16 characters and eliminating this issue would require massive changes to the font routine as well as having to make significant adjustments throughout the game for memory and timing on auto-advancing text. It was deemed not worth the additional work and delay. ============================================================================== CREDITS ============================================================================== MoriyaMug (@PricePartDeux) That's me. All of the script work, editing, a few minor graphical edits (like the nameplates on the character select), hex editing, most of the testing, and basically everything you see that isn't covered below. combustocrat (@combustocrat) For decades of friendship, boundless enthusiasm for my crazy projects, and every graphical alteration that actually requires artistic talent. Literally couldn't have done this without him. Justin Gibbins (@JustinGibbins) For an absurd amount of hacking work, including miscellaneous minor graphical fixes, forcing text display on voiceover-only scenes, fixing the smithy screen, modifying the opening text crawl, among many others. Pennywise (@ElCaminoOscuro) For the original hacking work, thus enabling proper display of the character profiles/input method/chapter select when starting a new game, as well as enabling proper display of certain combat messages. smkdan (@superfamicom) For his original work on the app that made it possible to get proper timing on the voiceover segments. Not his fault that I gave him bad info, which made my original attempt useless. khalismur (forumgoer on romhacking.net) For going in and updating smkdan's app with correct data, thus enabling me to fix the errors I made in my original attempt to fix the voices. Video Game Esoterica (@vesoterica) For putting fuel back in the tank and compelling me to start tinkering with the old project files. Chris For being the brother I never had, for always being there to support and encourage me, and for invaluable translation consulting. Lazarus (@Lazarus_DS) For additional translation support and being a sounding board for the general aches and pains caused by this project over the years. Last but not least, everyone who has supported me on Ko-Fi and everyone who's taken the time to say something nice on Twitter and RHDN. For those on a certain ancient forum who are still salty about interactions from literal decades ago... I hope the years have treated you well. May you find whatever peace you're looking for, and I hope you enjoy the game. ============================================================================== ABOUT THE PATCH ============================================================================== So you want to know what the hell happened here? Well, back in 2007, when I was occasionally working with Gideon Zhi of Aeon Genesis fame, a mysterious "Guest" in his chat provided me with the tools to dump the game's script. Only the tools, mind you. Only the most basic of instructions and no table. In essence, I was told "have fun figuring the rest out." And since I'm more than a little Samurai Shodown-obsessed, I immediately set to work. The first order of business was getting the font table. I knew where it was and how to get at it, so I found the earliest possible place to display text (in Ukyo's intro to Descent of Dark Skies, if you're wondering) and just had it list off every single entry in the table in order, then took screenshots. 16 characters per line. 1800 characters, almost all of which are Kanji, and many of them are somewhat archaic and not in common usage. Then I had to identify all of those Kanji and get them into a Shift-JIS form... so I used WWWJDIC and its multi-radical Kanji finder. For over 1500 Kanji. Nowadays, I could just let an OCR app do this work for me. Once I had a table, then I was able to dump the entire script into something I could actually read. Next was learning the way control codes work. This required a LOT of fiddly little changes and throwing various stuff at the font routine to see what broke. I learned, primarily, that there are two really important codes, and they are both context-sensitive. Let me tell you how much fun figuring that out wasn't. For the next few months or so, I worked on translating the entire script, and those two important control codes were and are the linchpin of how the game handles spoken dialogue. Unlike the PSX or Saturn versions of the game, which stream the voices off the disc like any other game audio, the Neo*Geo CD loaded the entire voice samples into memory, and called them up at the appropriate moment. The other thing is that these voiced segments are not broken up into individual lines, but are a fixed length, and the game uses those control codes to adjust the text display speed to keep up with the voices. The "context sensitive" aspect meant I was going to have to learn exactly how they worked or else the voices were just going to either be mistimed or left out entirely. So I did my best to figure out how they worked. In the middle of all of this, I was also using a PHP app called FEIDIAN to extract the graphics to be edited in Paint Shop Pro 6 (which I still use to this day). With the occasional help of my brother-in-arms and artist friend combustocrat, I gradually replaced the Japanese text of the intro and put in an English title, as well as the combat menus (which use the same part of the hardware as the HUD in other Neo games). A fine gentleman going by the handle smkdan reached out to me and offered to help by putting together a little VisualBasic app, which would allow me to paste Japanese text in with those control codes and determine how long each character was onscreen before the next character was displayed, etc. With a separate box for entering the control codes in English text. The idea being, naturally, if they match up, the timing will be accurate. Unfortunately, I made a massive error in figuring out the control codes. For reasons unknown to me, the text timing function is the only thing in the game's code which demands DECIMAL values instead of HEXADECIMAL. If a hex value is passed, the entire command gets ignored. Which meant that most of my modifications, the game disregarded entirely, as I was entering hex values. So imagine my surprise when I spent weeks on timing the entire script, only to find all of this work was useless and would have to be redone. I was also being accosted online by people who felt like the mere existence of my work meant that they were personally entitled to it, regardless of my thoughts on the matter. These two things, plus some tedious personal shit going on at the time, utterly sapped my drive to work on it, so I shelved the project. A few years passed and the urge to mess with it popped up again, so I started back up. Put in some work on the combat menus and cleaning up a few pieces of the script, streamed a playthrough of the entire game on Twitch, and just as I was really starting to get back into it, the HDD on which my work was stored died. It was a Western Digital USB3.0 one, meaning everything on it was encrypted and data recovery was unlikely to be able to get at the data. Sent it to a data recovery specialist and he had no luck. That, it seemed, was that. While I had an older backup, it was another huge setback that would require redoing EVEN MORE work, and I gave up on the idea of ever finishing it. Didn't think much about it until I started talking to Video Game Esoterica about SNK on Twitter and the subject of Samurai Shodown came up. I decided to send him the beta from 2008 to show on his channel, and the response to the video was so strong that I decided to start poking at the work files again. Lo and behold, I got sucked back in. Had to reacquaint myself with how a lot of stuff worked, threw my efforts into getting the text timing RIGHT this time (and khalismur helped by tweaking smkdan's app to use correct data), and wound up getting some useful ASM hacking assistance from Pennywise, who fixed issues with combat messages as well as several issues with proper display of text on the opening menus when starting a game. He found himself tied up with other projects and tasks, and referred me to another hacker by the name of Justin Gibbins. Justin took to the task almost immediately and not only fixed a graphical glitch in the intro, but he found how to force text display on a handful of scenes that had full-screen images and voiceover, but no dialogue boxes. With a bit of collaboration, we got them taken care of very quickly. And then Justin decided to add additional quality-of-life changes, accessible via soft DIP switches, as well as opening up the alternate colors that were in the game but not used. Try holding SELECT and/or D when you confirm your character/chapter when you start a new game, or hold D when closing out the dialogue where a character joins to have them appear in their alt colors. From there, it came down to fixing the opening text crawl to look a bit more professional, correcting some issues on the smithy screen, and final script polish. It took a couple more playthroughs to squash a few more bugs and find/fix some context errors, but the game is now 100% playable in English, start to finish. It's been a hell of a journey. And it's finally done, barring any bug fixes. Thanks for being here at the end of it.